Telling your story.

Vista Ridge Academy Promotional Video

The Relationship Between Time and Quality

When people think about hiring someone to shoot professional video for them, oftentimes their primary concern is money. Nothing wrong with that—anyone in business knows they need to make sound financial decisions with their income.

But is there a point where low cost translates into a noticeably low-quality production? If so, where is that point? The last thing any business wants to do is paint a picture of themselves as “cheap” instead of “financially responsible.”

Let Good Quality Speak for Itself

You’re a sensible business with a good-quality service or product. Whether you’re non-profit or for-profit, you believe in what you do. Here’s a secret to professional video—a little more goes a long, long way toward making a good impression.

An Example—Vista Ridge Academy

Recently, Clear Summit Productions did a publicity video for Vista Ridge Academy. Vista Ridge is a non-profit school, so their advertising budget isn’t huge, but they wanted their finished product to convey the dedication to quality that is one of their pillars of operation. How did they do that without breaking the bank? Simple—they allowed CSP more than bare-minimum time to get the job done.

In real life, more shooting time translated into a couple things:

The ability to gather more interviews than we needed; and

The ability to add technically interesting video footage to the video.

Extra interview footage allowed them to select only the very best footage to support their cause and discard the rest. And the time lapse and aerial segments we created fill the piece out and give it a more robust feel and look. All of which comes together into a more professional end product that better reflects the quality the client was trying to show.

Cost Analysis

Let’s be honest here, CSP could have shot this job in one day. We could have edited it together nicely and still produced a respectable piece of professional video work. BUT…the extra time this client gave us allowed us to schedule more interviews with people who couldn’t all make the same day, and add some extra touches to the finished piece.

This client stretched their dollars by purchasing more time and dividing their shoot time into half-days. This allowed them to pre-produce smaller segments at a time, at a higher level of preparation, with higher quality results. It also allowed CSP to focus on a smaller shot list at each scheduled shoot, which in turn allowed us to use more interesting shots.

The price point for these extras is no higher than the cost of the videographer’s time, and isn’t as daunting of a difference as you think. So next time you’re purchasing professional video, go ahead and dream a little bigger. Say things like, “I have this idea—tell me what this would mean in terms of cost on your end.” Ask those questions and get the facts. You’ll probably be pleasantly surprised at how affordable the extras are.